A Corpse in a Teacup (22 page)

Tuesday explained that her mother was Holley’s houseguest and that she had arrived back at her apartment at about eight p.m. and spent the rest of the evening by herself. “But why are you interested in my whereabouts?”

“Look at it from my point of view
, Miss Tuesday. I’m investigating three suspicious deaths and you are connected to each of them. Then you discover a piece of glass attached to your shoe, oh, and tell me why I should even believe that, and then a piece of the selfsame glass appears in the stomach contents of a victim. Tell me why I
shouldn’t
want to know where you were last night.”

Tuesday looked over at the door to gather her thoughts and saw Victor, the cat creator, arrive. Natasha flew into his arms, burying her face in his neck. He stroked her sh
oulders while murmuring in her ear. Tuesday felt a stab of jealousy. She had no interest in Victor, but the marital intimacy raised a longing that surprised her. A reflex made her think about Clipper. She focused on Natasha’s tearstained face instead. She was whispering something to her husband and caught Tuesday’s eye. She raised her fist behind Victor’s back and shook it at Tuesday. The threatening gesture made conversation with the detective an inviting option and Tuesday turned her back on Natasha.

And suddenly it hit her. “Detective, how did you know that piece of glass was from the cat? Am I right? You‘ve never
actually seen the cat before.”

Jameson turned and focused her eyes on Tu
esday. “You’re boyfriend identified it. He was at the autopsy this morning. You know, Clipper.”

“What’s wrong?
You’re asking me what’s wrong?”

Even with the volume turned up on her cell phone, the traffic outside the restaurant made it hard to hear Clipper’s protestations. She had stepped outside to get away from Natasha’s wailing and Jameson’s ugly looks
. But mostly to find out what Clipper was up to.

She was in the parking lot not caring that her shouts and accusations earned wary glances from people passing on the street.

“You play me for a fool and you want to know what’s wrong?” A guy walking by yelled, “Take your meds, lady
.”

Tuesday just continued pacing behind her car
and shaking her fist in the air. “You sweet talk me for information and you want to know what’s wrong? Jameson called one of her famous meetings at the Café. I have to learn from her that you’re involved in the case. When were you planning to tell me?”

He was saying something about being in the car and not having a good connection. A trio of women walked by, giggling and talking over one another, their shrill voices smothering
any more of Clipper’s defense. Tuesday wasn’t that interested in it anyway, her tirade racing forward like a freight train out of control.

“You make me look like an idiot! You’re working on the case that I’m pouring my heart out to you about and
you don’t even mention,
oh by the way, I’m intimately involved and I might have some information you’re looking for
. Let’s see, what else? Oh, yeah. You jeopardize my job! You can explain? Well I’d certainly like to hear this.”

A call from Holley interrupted her ranting.

“Hold on. I have to take another call. Don’t you go anywhere.”

It was aggravation piled on aggravation this morning. Her thumb fumbled around and wouldn’t connect Holley’s call, so she dropped her bag at her feet and did it two-handed. She
felt bad about not rushing over to Holley to break the news to her about the third mother, but she didn’t have wings. She’d had other fires to put out this morning. She’d have to make it quick, promise to come see her as soon as the meeting was over. Jameson was still waiting. “Sweet pea, I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you very soon, okay?”

Holley pushed on in an incoherent blur. Tuesday could only make out three words and they got her attention. “What do you mean someone’s casing your house?”

Tessa got on the line. “It’s a big, black SUV. Do you know who that could be?”

“In LA? Oh, one of only about five million people have a ride like that. Aren’t the police supposed to be cruising by the house every once in a while? Next time you see them, flag them down and tell
them what you’ve seen. Listen, Tessa, I need to call you back in just a few. Look for the squad car and let me get rid of this call. No, I can’t come right now. The police want to talk to me. I’ll explain.”

She hung up and got back to Clipper. She was about to say someone’s stalking Holley and my mother, when a bell went off in her head. What was it she was trying to remember? A black SUV? Clipper had a black SUV. The Porsche Cayenne he had parked in his driveway. Was he in it right now, driving by Holley’s place? But he had been in the Malibu
with her what, an hour ago? Plenty of time for him to get home and switch cars.

A slide show whipped across her mind. Pieces of a puzzle she couldn’t quite put together. Maybe she did pick up the shard of glass at Clipper’s. Did he have access to the Café? Was he stalking Holley? He was at the autopsy. Had he been involved with the other murders? Suddenly she didn’t care about his explanations. She wouldn’t believe anything he said anyway.

“Never mind, Clipper. I don’t need to hear anymore of your lies.” She hung up and stalked back into the restaurant.

Jameson’s team was hustling to get through the interviews with the staff so Natasha could open for lunch. Tuesday was scheduled to work again today. But before she began her shift, she had to get back to Holley’s and check on them. Jameson gestured for her to come to the table where she was conducting interviews.

Tuesday explained once again how she came to acquire the sliver of cat.

“I found it stuck to the bottom of my boot. But I have no idea how it got there. I was talking to Clipper and he saw it. I guess that’s how he recognized it at the autopsy.”

Jameson flipped
closed the cover on her iPad. “You can go but don’t leave town. We will probably have more questions for you.”

Tuesday was only partially relieved. She still had the polic
e looking over her shoulder. Yet, she needed their help right now. She stopped Detective Jameson. “Excuse me, but I have a problem that I need some help with.” She explained Holley’s suspicion that she was being stalked.

Jameson looked at her intently. “Give me the address.”

Relieved that Jameson was taking it seriously, Tuesday complied. The detective made a call, giving instructions to have a second car go to Holley’s and report back.

“And don’t just cruise by this time. I want you stationed outside her house until further notice.”

She said to Tuesday, “I don’t like the sound of this,” but couldn’t finish her thought because an uproar came from the kitchen. Rowena and Marco were at it again.

Tuesday ran after Jameson into the kitchen. Rowena looked like a figure from a walking dead movie. She was covered in a red sauce that dripped from her chin down to her toes, obliterating the Café’s logo on the pocket. She turned to anyone who would listen.

“He threw it at me. The Bolognese
sauce I’ve sweated over for two days.”

Marco pointed to the remains of the sauce in the stockpot on the stove. “You call that a sauce? I wouldn’t
serve it to jackals.”

Tuesday saw a new fire in Rowena’s eyes. Perhaps her stint running the kitchen
during Marco’s brief disappearance had given her courage. She was facing off with Marco, standing her ground. Her voice wasn’t wavering, on the verge of tears as it always did when the chef turned his wrath on her.

She shouted,
“I simmered it all day yesterday,” her voice loud and determined. “I was making the artichoke and goat cheese lasagna and all I had to do was heat the sauce. I was taking it out of the refrigerator and Marco wants to check it. He throws it at me. Two days work, ruined. And look at me.”

Marco’s face was as red as the sauce. “I could smell the tarragon from across the room. Who puts tarragon in a red sauce? An idiot, that’s who. You expect me to approve that mess? Have the custome
rs think that is my food? Never!”

As
Rowena and Marco argued over her choice of an herb du jour, she slipped off her sopping white jacket. She bent over, still arguing while she wiped sauce from her shoes with the ruined jacket, then threw it in a heap in the corner. She searched around looking for a clean smock and, finding none, grabbed one from a hook on the wall. It was Marco’s spare jacket embossed with his name.

He was livid as he watched her button it up
. “You take that off. You don’t deserve to wear a head chef’s smock. You haven’t earned it.”

Rowena came right back at him.
“Oh yes I have. I’ve earned a lot that hasn’t been given me in this kitchen.”

She roll
ed up the sleeves on the oversized garment and put her hands in the pockets to adjust it to her small frame. She pulled something out, a small object. She opened her palm to examine it.

Tuesday gasped when she saw it.
It was a sliver of the missing Mulberry Cat.

Jameson said, “Give that to me.”

Marco went white.

Jameson looked at Marco. “Can you explain this?”

Peter, the sommelier, said, “Oops.”

Marco was flustered and stumbled for an explanation. “It must be the one that girl gave me.” Tuesday’s temper flared up. Marco knew her name.

“I guess when I threw it in the trash it landed in my pocket
instead.”

Tuesday leaned forward to get a better look. “That’s not the piece I gave you. What I found was the cat’s ear. This is flat and square.”

Just then the front door of the restaurant opened and a second whirlwind burst into the dining room.

“Marco, you son of a bitch, you parked my car by a hydrant and it cost me $500. I want my money. You pay me back right now!”

Tuesday blinked. Could it be? It was Cindy from the impound lot.

Then Cindy held up a clear plastic bag filled with what looked like orange and turquoise pebbles. “And don’t leave your trash in my car. Suppose the kids found this and started playing with it. This glass would cut them to shreds.”

It was the remnants of the Mulberry Cat Tuesday had seen in her trunk.

Cindy stood at the door to the kitchen surveying the mess on the floor. “So. Did you finally kill someone with that temper of yours? And by the way. You’re two days late with my alimony check!

Peter grinned and added, “Double oops.”

“I wanted to meet with you this morning to come clean about everything.”

Clipper had parked his car in the lot behind the Café. The big, black SUV. So she knew he wasn’t stalking Holley. Nobody was stalking Holley. She’d sent a text that it was Brava Vitale driving by her house. The director’s wife coming over to drop off soup. Her way of comforting the cast and crew rattled by the three deaths.

Tuesday remembered Holley gushing over the director’s wife when they first talked about the threatening phone calls.
A delivery of food was a generous gesture. Plus, it saved her a trip up the hill to check on Holley and Tessa. Jameson had called off the dogs. A good thing because she had her hands full at the restaurant separating Marco from his very angry ex-wife, Cindy.

Clipper drummed on the steering wheel, gearing himself up to break the silence.
“Look, I get it. You don’t want anything to do with me. But before I say goodbye to you, I need to explain what’s been going on. Yeah, I should have done it sooner, but things are, shall we say, complicated.”

He didn’t look at Tuesday when he spoke, but straight ahead at the bushes lining the parking lot.

Tuesday sat in the passenger seat, rigid and silent while he nervously flicked the turn signal on and off, each of them hugging their respective doors to leave as much space between them as possible. That was the condition Tuesday laid down before she agreed to listen to his tale. No touching.

Clipper appeared
unannounced at the Café, arriving during the ruckus between Marco and Cindy, Marco and Rowena, Marco and Natasha. “I was afraid if I called to ask you to listen to me, you’d refuse,” he explained.

“
You got that right,” Tuesday muttered, refusing to look at him lest she lose hold of her feeling of betrayal. She was afraid one pleading smile from him would melt her anger, but she did follow him to his car.

Now she said,
“So what’s your story?”

“Here’s the thing. I’m no longer on the force, that’s true. But I’m still in the business. I’m a private investigator now and the
Cuthbert’s have hired me. Ariel Cuthbert’s family. I should say the Cuthbert’s hired the outfit I work for. Zeus Partners. Actually, there are no partners. One guy owns the joint, another runs it and a few of us subcontract when he needs help. It’s a good gig. Helps pay the ex-wife with a good chunk left over. So good, I left the force to go out on my own.

“Anyway, t
he Cuthbert’s never believed the heart attack story. They wanted to know what happened to her.”

Tuesday kept her eyes trained on the hood ornament of the SUV.
“And you couldn’t tell me that why, exactly?”

“I needed to figure out what was going on. What was going on with
you? Why you were so involved with the case. Then you kept asking me questions and my information is confidential. Or, it was until this morning.”

“What happened this morning?”

“Zora’s autopsy. I was only hired to find out what happened to Ariel. But then these other deaths occurred and everything looked suspicious. All linked to the movie. Instead of one investigation, I suddenly had three on my hands. I was tasked with figuring out how someone could make an otherwise healthy person keel over from a heart attack.

Tuesday was interested, but cautious about showing it, so she remained silent.

“I came up with some theories but nothing conclusive. I thought I had something for a while with a poisonous lily, but it didn’t fit in a lot of ways. And I only had access to one crime scene, Ariel’s, so I couldn’t be as thorough as I’d like. I’ve still got friends in the department, but most of the guys don’t like a private investigator coming in and getting inside info so he can solve the case and get the big bucks from the client while the regulars most of the time can’t even get overtime. I have to be careful and fair. So I pulled in some chits and got invited to Zora’s post mortem. Imagine my surprise when the sliver of glass showed up in her stomach contents. I recognized it immediately from your shoe. How weird is that? I was bound to tell the ME what I knew. If I hadn’t, I’d never get a favor from the LAPD again.”

Tuesday was only slightly mollified.
“So you called to see if I knew how the glass got in Zora’s stomach.”

“That, for sure. And more.”
Now he was staring at her. She felt his eyes pleading for her attention. She forced herself to keep looking out her side window. “So it wasn’t my dreamy pink hair that sold you. You thought I might be a suspect?”

“Oh, yeah. The hair got to me. The whole package. Every word of that is true, everything I’ve told you. But
when I met you, I realized I had to hold myself back. I had to be professional. I was afraid of losing it with you. I told you. I’ve been trained to suspect everybody. You’ve had me going.”

She couldn’t help herself. She whipped her head around.
“I’ve had
you
going? What about me? You told me that Ariel’s house didn’t reveal any clues. I happened to know that was privileged information. Only the killer would know it. You run hot and cold with me, you have all these expensive toys and no visible means of support. Then it looks like I picked up the cat at your house. Did I think you were in on all this? You bet I did.”

Clipper broke in. “But what I said this morning about trusting you? I meant that. And still do.
I figured you couldn’t be involved. Maybe I just didn’t want you to be involved. That’s why I’m here. Hoping you can get back to that place again, trusting me. And I’m willing to spill the beans to help you along.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I’m going to start from the top. I wanted to see you this morning, because I’m a professional. I had to ask a hard question, about the piece of glass in Zora’s autopsy. Did you know how it got there? But I also wanted to give you the Girl Scout treatment. You know, let you be prepared, give you a head’s up that Jameson would probably want to grill you about it. Then when I saw you at your house looking, well, looking the way you do, I lost my nerve again. Then the thing with your car happened, the lady with the cat in her trunk, Jameson popping it on you when you least expected it. That brings us to here and now.”

“Not quite,” she said. “You haven’t told me what I really need to know. Is Holley in danger? Do you know who did these murders, or if they even are murders?”

“Tuesday, will you look at me? Just look at me. I won’t touch.”

Reluctantly, she turned her head
again.

“
That’s better. Okay, here goes. You understand that a lot of my information is confidential. But I’ll start at the top. First of all, Ariel’s family didn’t believe the heart attack story for a minute because was too young, too healthy. Now the human body has a strong hold on life. It’s actually pretty hard to kill a healthy person and hide the cause. A blunt object or a weapon, well, that’s different. But I’ve even seen cases where it was hard to show malice with a gunshot to the back of the head. Murderers can be pretty ingenious in hiding their tracks.

“I ruled out everything.
Electrical shocks, trauma to obscure places on the body that would cause death, everything. I even considered broken heart syndrome. You know, like the hex deaths. Someone announces they’ve put a hex on someone and the victim believes it. Then soon after, sure enough they die. Death occurs not from the hex, but heart failure from fright. But even with Takotsubo Syndrome, that’s the medical name, it changes the shape of the heart and leaves other telltale marks, so even that is diagnosable. Next obvious cause of death was poison. I’ve checked into every plant and chemical I could think of, but nothing showed on the tox report.”

Tuesday scowled. “Where have I heard that before?”

“Huh?”

“I told you about the case in Darling Valley. Same thing, until they did special tests.”

“Well, thanks to you, or, I should say, the glass stuck to your shoe, they’re being run now. Unless Zora was into eating glass, someone fed her something that deliberately or accidentally had the glass in it. It left marks on the way down. She also had bleeding in her mouth and throat.”

Tuesday grimaced.

“Sorry to be graphic, but it’s clear she was murdered. But the only clue we have is the glass. Far as we can tell she didn’t know anyone at the Café, had never been there, had never come in contact with the cat before her death.”

He reached over and took her hand. She flinched, but let it stay there.

“You have inside info on the Café. I have to figure out the link to someone there. Would you help me figure it out? I know it wasn’t you, I hope you believe that. But maybe together we can crack this.”

Tuesday
’s throat thickened with emotion. This was what she wanted with Clipper. Trust and commitment. But it was taking her a few beats to move from suspicion to faith in him. She looked in his eyes and nodded. A smile teased the corners of his mouth and her resistance to Clipper broke down. He reached over and kissed her, slowly, gently. He stretched back into his seat. “To be continued when we get this crime stuff out of the way, okay?”

A slow smile spread across her face. “You’ve got a date.”

But then her face grew dark. “Wait a minute.” Her voice was charged and guttural. “Wh
at do you mean a poisonous lily?”

Clipper told her. She said, “I know who the killer is. He’s been under our nose all this time. He’s star crazy, probably a stalker. And he’s right next door to Holley. Mr. Gregory, the lily man.”

They
ran inside and snagged Detective Jameson as she was getting ready to leave. Both Clipper and Tuesday each told her their part of the story.

“I’m not sure it’s enough to hold him,
yet, but it sure is enough to bring him in for questioning.”

“How about a warrant to search his premises.”

Jameson had her iPad out. “I’m already on it.”

Butel was on his phone sending a squad car to Holley’s house.

Tuesday was texting Holley. “Don’t let Gregory into the house.”

“Why,” was the reply.

“JUST DON’T. I’ll explain later.”

A few minutes later, Butel walked up to them. “No point bringing him in. Officers were close to the lily guy’s house. They questioned him and his alibi’s for the nights of the deaths are airtight. He was either conducting meetings at his garden club or away at conferences. We got corroboration.”

Jameson and Clipper through up their hands. Clipper said, “That’s the crime fighting business. Mostly dead ends.”

The detective rounded up her crew and left.

Clipper walked Tuesday to her table in the corner. She didn’t have enough time to hurry to Holley’s house and give her and her mother a comforting hug before her first customer was due. She offered him tea, a glass of wine, but he said I’ll settle for a little time with you.”

Tuesday took his hand. “Tell me what else you found in your investigations.”

He sighed. Tuesday saw the strain of the investigation, the conflict between them and rubbed his shoulder. She imagined she looked just as stressed. He said, “There isn’t much to tell. Ariel had rented a little bungalow behind the owner’s house. They were out that evening, so they didn’t hear or see anything untoward. She was found in the living room in front of the TV. It was tuned to one of those rich housewives reality shows. Friends said she was addicted to them, so everything looked normal. She just seemed to have keeled over. Her last message on her phone was a text to the local pizza place. Nothing unusual there. Cops found a half eaten bowl of soup in the kitchen with not much in the refrigerator. Typical millennial’s kitchen, right. They always eat out.”

“You mean like certain ex-detectives who have their own seat at the bar at Ozzie’s?”

Clifford grinned. “Kinda.”

“So they figured she g
ot hungry, soup wasn’t doing it for her and she ordered a pizza, It was paid for so the pizza delivery guy left it on her doorstep when she didn’t answer the doorbell. The owners saw it when they pulled into the garage. They investigated because they thought she might have fallen asleep and were afraid the pizza would attract raccoons. They looked in the window and saw her face down on the coffee table.”

Tuesday
tucked her foot under her knees, her back against the door, studying Clipper’s face. “How do you know nothing was disturbed?”

“I called in a chit. I still have a few friends on the force and they let me come along for the ride.
Looked like cardiac arrest or a stroke to me at first. But something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I told Zeus there was reason to investigate.”

Something was nagging in the back of Tuesday’s mind, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Did they check the soup for poison and stuff?”

“First thing they did. No evidence of contamination and no poison in her system. They checked for electric shocks, minute pinpricks that might have been dosed with something. Nothing.
But something about the way she fell bothered me. I saw the photos that the crime scene team took. She was face down on the coffee table. Had a mark on her head. If you weren’t looking for anything you’d have missed it. But something told me she was posed. A heart attack? She’d have fallen back into the couch. Why was she sitting on the edge of her seat?”